


raindrops, refracted

by Miss_Ash



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:52:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16634183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Ash
Summary: In the ten long years that Mac has known Phryne Fisher, she has only seen her cry five times.





	raindrops, refracted

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if Mac invaded my Phrack fic or Phrack invaded my Mac fic but I never really landed on a firm answer. I just wanted Mac and Phryne friendship, and Mac reacting to Phrack, and to not write my NaNoWriMo. Either way I ended up with this absolute nonsense.

 

**_i_.**

 

The first time Elizabeth MacMillan sees her friend (then new, relatively mysterious still, one day to be best) cry, it’s a surprise if only for the fact that the tears do not seem to be of sorrow.

She hadn't expected Phryne – long since lost to the wilds of Paris – to turn up at the hospital Mac is working at, pale faced and fat-lipped, but it's with a honed skill at understanding patients, and a developing one for understanding Phryne Fisher, that she hurries her into a quiet room before the dam can break.

And when it does, Mac expects it to be pain, or grief, or fear. What she realises, as the sobs give way to hysterical peals of laughter, is that the tears are a river of unspeakable, unadulterated _relief_.

Mac sits in silence, just letting it happen, and when the shaking of giggles has stopped, and the tears are turning to tacky, salt tracks down Phryne’s cheeks, she finally sets to work fixing the lip that is still weeping blood.

She works in silence, and Phryne – unsettling as it is – seems content that way. She leaves her there for a while with a quiet reassurance that she’ll be back as soon as she's made her excuses, and it's later – much later, several whiskies in – that Phryne finally fills her in on everything that she has missed since they parted ways in a field hospital.

The story of her friend’s escapades fill her with a multitude of emotions, from jealousy and awe to fear and sheer rage. When Phryne is done, Mac is about ready to break her Hippocratic oath and kill a man – but more than vengeful, Phryne just seems tired, and so she lets it go.

They don't speak of the tears again, but they drink often, and it's with warm hugs and promises to write she has no doubt are sincere that they eventually part again months later, Phryne Fisher much less of a mystery than she had been in the bloody fields of war.

 

**_ii._ **

 

It’s by total accident (and a healthy dose of total ignorance) that Mac happens to be with her for the anniversary. They’re in London at the same time by chance, Phryne there for the season with her family, and Mac there for a week or so before she makes her way back to the other side of the world again. Phryne had sent an address and an open invite to come and drink whenever suited, and Mac had been happy to accept – making her way over one evening after a particularly pleasant day pottering around museums.

It’s obvious the minute the door opens – by Phryne’s own hand for starters – that something is wrong.

“Mac?” Phryne asks, and her eyes are red-rimmed in a way that makes worry flare in Mac’s chest, memory of a night Phryne had appeared – battered and tearful – sharp in her mind.

“Phryne?” Mac asks, and she tries her best not to frown, but it’s one of her favourite expressions and since the very beginning of their acquaintance Phryne has been an expert in coaxing them out of her. “Should I have called? Or should I be calling the police?” And it’s a joke, except it’s not, because as strong as she knows her friend is Mac also knows how badly René damaged her and she lives in constant fear of it happening again.

“What? Oh – no, no, sorry I just… I wasn’t expecting…” she trails off, swallowing heavily.

Mac knows she is exceptional at many things, but triage might be chief of them, and it takes her roughly thirty seconds to assess the situation before coming to a decision. She takes in the redness that implies Phryne has not just been crying the brief, hysterical tears she herself had been witness to once, nor the silent slow-stream of heartbreak (unlikely as that would have been, anyway). Phryne looks like she has been sobbing for hours, eyes sore, and stature bowed by grief that rolls from her in waves. Her staff – which Mac knows she has – are not there, as evidenced by Phryne opening the door herself. Her clothes are excellent, as always, but muted – black, in fact – and her feet are bare. It is also December, and as much as Phryne still has yet to tell her about the sister who no longer exists, she knows that whatever happened happened in December.

She invites herself in.

Phryne seems surprised by it, though not enough to protest, and after a few minutes of polite chit-chat Mac stares her dead in the eye and simply states, “You can cry, Phryne, don’t mind me.”

She looks like she wants to protest, but shuts her mouth, drawing a little further back into her chair. They sit in silence then, and eventually the quiet is broken by the sound of Phryne’s sobs. Mac briefly considers hugging her, but she thinks that whatever this is it’s something she might need to do alone. Not completely alone, but at something of a distance at least. She pours herself a drink and sits there with her own thoughts until the room grows silent again.

It’s the not until the next day that Phryne finally tells her the full story of Janey, the sister she lost when she was far too young to have had to bear it. When she’s finished talking Mac sets aside her buttered toast, walks around the breakfast table, and hugs her.

 

**_iii._ **

 

Shell shock is what it's called in soldiers, but with her years of experience as a doctor Mac thinks that the human response to trauma of all kinds is a little deeper and more complex than those two words. Certainly when you're an heiress by the name of Phryne Fisher.

There's no difference, ultimately, between the Phryne who had tied bandages and triaged soldiers under gunfire, who had watched countless men die with her hands still on them and then waltzed off to Paris to attempt to forget the whole endeavour – and the Phryne of later. She is lighter, happier – sillier, even – perhaps, but Mac knows that beneath her well-deserved frivolity Phryne is still haunted.

It's something she deals with exceptionally well, Mac finds, both in the rare occasions they get to see each other and through the lengthy letters she writes detailing the twists and turns of her ever-intriguing life. It isn't something that doesn't exist though, and that is something Mac is abruptly and shockingly reminded of when Phryne eventually returns home to Melbourne and is faced with the demons of her past further-distant than Mac has known her.

It's no great surprise to her when she gets to Wardlow that the Inspector is there, because when is he not? (And that, that is something she wishes she had the balls to bring up to her best friend, but she values her own life far too much for that). What she does find surprising is the wetness on Phryne’s lashes, and the fact that Jack, too, is witness to them.

In all the years she has known Phryne, she has only seen her cry twice. A decade of friendship and a teacup of tears. It's not that she minds – Phryne is not a person who cries often, and Mac is not a person who deals awfully well with criers – their friendship has likely thrived quite well due to that compatibility. It doesn't make it less surprising though, because Mac is ten years in and Jack is maybe a hundred and ten _days_ but here he is, a witness to the part of her soul she so rarely bares.

It is testament, she supposes, to the depth of this hurt. More than war, more than René, more than the cruel callowness of her father or the absent coolness of her mother, more than any of the hurts that Mac has personally watched Phryne experience and recover from, Janey is her best friend's deepest torment, now finally put to rest.

Jack greets her at the door to the parlour with a worried glance back over his shoulder and a hushed, “Thank goodness you're here, I don't know what to do she’s not spoken a word in hours.”

And Mac looks from Jack to Phryne and back again, feeling the crease it puts in her own brow. Phryne’s eyes (unbeknownst to Jack with his back to her, and she thinks quite likely unbeknownst to Phryne too, whose gaze is vacant where it follows) are fixed on Jack. For as much as she understands about her dear friend, there are as many things again that she does not. The expression in Phryne’s eyes though, the empty longing sitting above tear tracks, she thinks it might be the first time in their decade-long acquaintance that she both understands completely and not at all.

She knows the expression because she has seen it a thousand times before – on the faces of patients, on lovers, in the mirror. It is a face she recognises, but not on Phryne Fisher.

There is no denying its presence though, and so she says what she knows to be the truth, even if it beggars belief.

“I'm not sure I'm who she needs, Inspector Robinson – but, of course, I’ll stay. So long as you will.”

And when he settles back into an armchair, suit jacket slung over the back of it and hair curling stubbornly past a bruise she's only just noticed is there, with his intention to stay as clear as the fresh whisky in her hand makes hers, Mac thinks she sees something in the back of Phryne’s haunted eyes settle.

The tears continue to track silently down her face until they've each fallen asleep in their respective chairs.

 

**_iv._ **

 

Considering the last time she saw her best friend cry, it comes as far less of a surprise as Mac might consciously have believed it would when the next time she sees it happen, the cause is Jack Robinson.

Phryne Fisher is not someone who cries over men, not in any regular sort of sense, and Mac finds herself less concerned and more bemused at the sight of it. She's half a mind to take a scalpel to the Inspector to start with. The notion passes about as briefly as it has come, though, knowing that the tears Phryne is crying for Jack are _not_ tears for a man in any regular sort of sense.

Jack’s tears are not tears of grief, or pain, or fear. They are not tears of unadulterated relief after escaping from a chokehold cruel enough to quell even the formidable Phryne Fisher. No, the tears she is crying for Jack are tears of frustration.

Frustration Mac thinks is a little ridiculous, even if she understands it more than most would.

“Phryne, have you considered that maybe _telling_ him you feel like this wouldn't be the end of the world?” she asks, expression one that encourages no nonsense.

“What good would it do, Mac?” Phryne exclaims, though. “I'm not a well-mannered commissioner’s daughter or a… a beautiful Italian housewife type. Jack needs a _wife_. I need freedom. It just… it would never work, Mac. There's no point dwelling on it.”

Mac watches as Phryne wipes with angry fingers at the tears that are slipping through her lashes, no doubt displeased at their treachery by escaping. She loves her, and much to her own chagrin she has to admit the woman is right the majority of the time, but on this occasion Mac is morally certain that her friend is wrong.

“Maybe it's not that black and white,” she offers, half-hiding the words behind her tumbler as she takes another sip of whisky. She might have her opinions, but she also doesn't want to be the next murder City South investigates. “Love is more complicated than that, Phryne.”

Phryne’s head whips her direction at that, her tears seemingly shocked into stillness. She stares at Mac for a moment, then lets out a small scoff of laughter. “I’m not in love with him, Mac.”

Mac rolls her eyes, sends up a silent prayer for strength, and stands. Phryne’s skin is warm beneath her fingers as she reaches forward and grips her gently by the arm, a strange contrast to the coolness of her expression.

“How long have we known each other, Phryne?” she asks, meeting her gaze and keeping it. She has sympathy for her friend, of course she does, but her patience is coming to an end. Besides which she’d give a limb or two to see Phryne happy after all the pain she’s seen, and she is almost disarmingly sure that this is right. Even if it’s wrong. Even if it blows up spectacularly in all their faces. Right now, this is right.

“Too long,” is Phryne’s eventual, pouted, reply.

“Then let me remind you – you can lie to yourself, but you sure as hell can’t lie to me.”

And when Phryne opens her mouth to argue, Mac simply raises an eyebrow, stopping her in her tracks.

They stand in silence then for several moments, until Phryne’s shoulders slump and Mac pulls her into a hug she knows she needs even if she’d never ask for.

“Look at it this way,” Mac tells her. “It’s just another adventure you haven’t had yet.”

There’s a soft sniff against her shoulder, a nodding head, and then Phryne pulls back and swipes at her eyes again. Business-like rather than frustrated. She shakes herself off in a manner so typical it pulls a smirk from Mac’s mouth, then crosses to pour them both another whisky.

The subject changes, as Mac knew it would, but Phryne is calmer as she talks. Peace in her eyes where there had been war.

By the time Mac leaves, the tears are long gone.

 

**_v._ **

 

“You’re crying.”

“I am _not_ ,” Phryne protests even as she sniffs against the moisture glistening in the corners of her eyes.

“You’re definitely crying.”

“Quiet, Mac,” she snaps, and Mac just laughs.

She’s not judging, not at all, but it’s fun to tease her just the same. Of all the things she’d ever have thought she’d see in her lifetime, Phryne Fisher crying at a love letter was _certainly_ not one of them.

“You have to let me read it if it’s that good.”

“It’s sentimental nonsense,” Phryne replies, brushing at her cheek before folding up the paper and tucking it carefully next to her heart. Mac decides to be kind and not point out that if anything is sentimental nonsense it’s that. She’s still curious, though.

“Paraphrase then,” she instructs and Phryne shrugs, reaching for her glass.

“Oh it’s all ‘miss you’s, and ‘love you’s, and ‘I can’t wait to be home’s.” She waves a hand in the air dismissively, as if Mac doesn’t know with intimate detail how very much she misses him and loves him and can’t wait for him to be home. Phryne’s obstinacy is not something that love has managed to dim a single watt – quite rightly too, of course – but it often causes an entertaining juxtaposition of emotion.

“Disgusting,” Mac agrees aloud. “The man should get a hold of himself.”

Phryne chuckles, the sound soft but wicked. “I’m sure he has done multiple times in my absence.”

And that is an image she most decidedly did not need. She makes a face, takes a swig of whisky, and stands to leave. “I take it there’s more to that letter than just ‘miss you’s and ‘love you’s then?”

Phryne smirks.

“Well, that’s definitely my cue.”

She picks up her glass and drains the contents, blowing a kiss at her friend as she heads for the door, and for a moment she pauses. Phryne’s fingers are resting absently over the place she has tucked the letter, and there is still a dampness around her lashes that Mac thinks she will never quite get used to seeing there, uncommon as it still is. Its presence doesn’t break her heart the way it had the first time she’d ever seen it, though, perhaps because now it is so distant from those traces of a man whose handiwork Mac will never quite forget, trailing salty tears both clear and red down her best friend's face.

In the ten long years that Mac has known Phryne Fisher, she has only seen her cry five times, but the now and the then are so different as to seem as if they occurred in different lifetimes. Once upon a time, Phryne’s tears had appeared like raging storms, an outer symptom of a torment inside. Now, Mac thinks, they’re more like individual raindrops, the gentle patter of peace hard-won.

And even though she will help her friend (once new, rather mysterious, now best) face whatever storms might have yet to come, she’d much rather see the raindrops.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally I was going to write from Phryne's perspective, then I thought about doing it from Jack's, then I thought Mac's might be interesting. Eventually I decided I'll probably wind up doing all three at some point, Mac just wanted to go first.


End file.
